It’s been less than a year since the Omaha VA opened a new outpatient care facility to serve the region’s veterans, built through a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership with Omaha philanthropists.

Now the Omaha VA is exploring another public-private partnership to improve inpatient hospital and surgical facilities for veterans — with one possibility discussed being to include such a facility as part of the massive Project NExTon the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus.

To help lay the groundwork for a potential new inpatient facility, U.S. Rep. Don Bacon and U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer this week introduced legislation reauthorizing the CHIP-IN for Veterans Act, the 2016 federal law providing for public-private partnerships that made the Omaha outpatient care center possible.